kind of a cool thread that has visual comparisons of different zeldas below. you can really see where skyward sword fits in when you see it next to twilight princess on one side and windwaker on the other, almost like those diagrams showing the stages of evolution from ape to man: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=22072963&postc...

twilight princess simultaneously looks amazing and terrible; the detail, depth and darkness of it still look great but the rough and jaggedy nature of it looks pretty ugly compared to the utterly smooth visuals in skyward sword. windwaker also winds up looking a little too plain for my tastes compared to the new game... the more i see of it, the more i think skyward sword will top both of them, especially considering that they've got half a year to spend on refining the visuals.

I saw that. I hope the release dates aren't too far apart by region. Early 2011 is about what I expected. It'll be interesting to see how they top Skyward Sword for holiday that year, but I think I'll wait till after this holiday to start speculating on next.

Most people don't seem excited about this one as much. I am, but to a lesser extent to what I thought I'd be.

I love the art style, and looks to be a step up from TP's muddy brown, gross texture art style. However, it looks a bit.... solid. The Wind Waker had fluidity but this title seems to be a bit too..... Er... Slow. I blame this mostly on reusing Link's model from TP, where the animations are kind of slow (and now outdated). That brings us to another problem I have: Why are they reusing Link's model from a game that came out in 2006? Why not just create a new one? It's kinda cheap what they did with that.

I love everything else though. As long as it has a whimsical story and soundtrack while staying away from the overly dramatic Twilight Princess, it'll be VERY good.

How is that more odd than waving around and pointing a Wii remote with fine precision in your secondary hand? Makes perfect sense to me. Either way, you have to undo something you've learned, and it would be far more natural to take advantage of the ambidextrous nature of the Wii remote and hold it like most people: remote in primary hand, nunchuk in secondary. Motion controls are far more awkward with your off hand than analog stick use.

Most people don't seem excited about this one as much. I am, but to a lesser extent to what I thought I'd be.

I love the art style, and looks to be a step up from TP's muddy brown, gross texture art style. However, it looks a bit.... solid. The Wind Waker had fluidity but this title seems to be a bit too..... Er... Slow. I blame this mostly on reusing Link's model from TP, where the animations are kind of slow (and now outdated). That brings us to another problem I have: Why are they reusing Link's model from a game that came out in 2006? Why not just create a new one? It's kinda cheap what they did with that.

I love everything else though. As long as it has a whimsical story and soundtrack while staying away from the overly dramatic Twilight Princess, it'll be VERY good.

About reusing Link's model... they have done it before with Toon Link many times, so it's not anything new.

TP looks way way better for my taste. Zelda story is dramatic, ZTP ambience has that bit of dramatism too. This is gone with the new one, now it looks certainly like pastic and with "pastel-like" softened colours and little or not contrasts, and then, in the middle, bright coloured enemies that doesnt fit any well with the surroundings. For me the new one looks terrible.

surprise surprise, mandoble hates another game? if anything i'd say link looks more like clay than plastic. one really nice thing about the visuals is that the art style avoids the problems the other games had and cleverly covers up the glitches you normally can't avoid seeing; look closely at everything and it's easy to marvel at the lack of technical 'seams' you're used to seeing in games.

for instance, windwaker was beautiful but very plain with no real textures to speak of while twilight princess was very detailed but with very low quality textures. this game has a lot to see within the cell shading but none of it really looks like a regular texture thanks to the paintbrush effect, which makes grass, dirt, and leaves all look like part of a very pleasant painting from close up or far away alike.

windwaker had a problem with everything in the distance blurring, which this game also turns into a pleasing effect by (in addition to dramatically increasing the draw distance) softening the colors from far away, also to look like a far off landscape in a painting. i think the way they've managed to cover up most visual limitations the other zeldas suffered from and turn them into an asset with the new impressionist style is very cool.

the most important thing to keep in mind if you don't like the way it looks is that they're devoting practically the rest of this year just to making it look even better; the majority of the game itself is already done. metroid other m already looks much better than it did at it's announcement, so even though i think skyward sword looks great now, maybe it'll improve just as much in a few months. the demo at E3 was something aonuma didn't even want to show since he didn't think it was developed enough yet, so don't judge it too harshly just yet.

@NEG A) Adam is right, surprisingly. B) I never noticed the change in hand controlling joystick; but it's really hard to point accurately, etc. with your secondary hand. C) The Wii Sports games seem to think it's natural as that's how they work.

I imagine that the number of lefties that use nunchuk in their right hand are the same number of lefties that choose a Southpaw configuration for dual-analog shooters?

I know a lefty that doesn't really like either configuration. He doesn't like using his right hand on the nunchuk, and he doesn't like using it to aim either. It might be better to just have the pointer on the nunchuk (but maybe that's too many tasks for the same hand?) for him.

“Yes there is a master timeline but its confidential document!” explains Aunuma-san. “The only people to have access to that document are myself, Mr. Miyamoto and the director of the title. We cant share it with anyone else! I have already talked to Mr. Miyamoto about this so I am comfortable in releasing this information – this title [Skyward Sword] takes place before Ocarina of Time. if I said that a certain title was ‘the first Zelda game’, then that means that we cant ever make a title that takes place before that! So for us to add titles to the series, we have to have a way of putting the titles before or after each other.” aonuma